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SettleMint launches blockchain voting application!

03 November 2016

The world has been captivated by a ‘memorable’ run up to the US election and we thought we have our friends at StoryMe put together a light-hearted animated video to celebrate two key themes that seem to have been underlying and unofficial campaign slogan for the two front runners: “I didn’t say that” and “I didn’t send that”. Although memory loss seems to have been an issue in this election, your vote is something that should never be forgotten. Please have a look at the video and like, share and post it.

With this as a backdrop, SettleMint is pleased to announce the launch of it’s first publicly available application, which we are tentatively calling ‘SettleMint ballot box’. The application pulls together a number of distributed ledger technologies including the SettleMint middleware layer ‘Mint’, BigChainDB, Chainpoint and the bitcoin blockchain.

In addition to having a peak at the video, it would be great if you could also take a minute of two to use the SettleMint ballot box application to enter your 100% anonymous, 100% secure, 100% immutable vote. You can find it here. When you get to the result screen, be sure to check out your receipt and anchor to validate that your vote was included in the results.

It is important to note that this is not an official channel for registered American voters to cast their official votes. Rather a demonstration of how blockchain and adjacent technologies can be used to bring voting into the digital age so if you are a registered American voter, don’t forget to cast your vote via the official channels in your district.

We will be publishing a white paper in the coming weeks on the possibilities, constraints and opportunities for using blockchain and adjacent technologies for voting. Follow this publication if you would like to be kept up to date.
Why did we create this application?

There are a number of issues with voting systems around the world, be that for federal or municipal elections to select government officials, for corporate governance to take decisions in corporations or for the organisation of proxy voting by shareholders.

In any system that requires reconciliation to be performed to determine an outcome, like counting votes in different states and where different technologies were used, the usefulness of a blockchain based solution is worth investigating. Not only to ensure the correctness of the outcome and to ensure anonymity but also to cut the cost of reconciliation, counting votes in this case.

Another recent example of technologies being used for federal elections that may not be entirely adequate arose in Austria this year. A re-election was called after it was revealed that on the one hand the counting of votes in certain districts began too early and on the other, and a finding that still has many scratching their heads, those conducting the counting of ballots were not qualified to count.

We are working on a white paper that should be ready in a few weeks time to provide more insights into how blockchain and adjacent technologies could bring voting technologies into the digital age. If you want to hear our views on the topic, please follow this publication and you will get an update when the white paper is out.

If you are interested in other applications of this technology, have a look at https://settlemint.io/ and if you want to get in touch to discuss whether these technologies might be something for your business, send us a message at [email protected]